Firearms have a plurality of uses in society, ranging from self-defense, military and law enforcement use, general personal use, and competitive shooting, as well as Second Amendment privileges for proper civilian checks and balances upon government. Shooting is generally enjoyed by many individuals cutting across various social strata. Mastery of shooting, in particular for pistol craft, is an art form requiring many athletic, psychological and physiological elements for the elusive objective of perfecting one's skill with a pistol.
An element of training with a firearm, in one particular form a pistol, requires dedication and commitment by a shooter. One form of practice consists of live fire whereby actual rounds are shot at a range of some sort at a target or an array of targets. Live fire, of course, is what is commonly envisioned with regard to practice and training. However, ammunition can be expensive, and even when a shooter reloads, there is a certain expense and time investment involved in reloading. An alternative form of practice is referred to as “dry firing”. When a shooter engages in dry firing, no rounds are expelled through the gun and various aspects of pistolcraft can be trained, such as transitions, reloads, footwork and other elements of pistolcraft. One element of pistolcraft and firearms handling in general relates to trigger mechanics. In general, trigger mechanics is the study of the pressing of a trigger with minimal undesirable sight movement.
Of course triggered mechanics does not work in isolation and other elements of shooting such as grip, site alignment, site picture play a heavy role in speed and accuracy with a firearm. Further, with regard to dynamic shooting, the acceleration of the body, accelerating the body out of a shooting position, providing proper follow-through of pressing the trigger prior to exiting a shooting position or transitioning off the target, all are examples of skill sets that must be trained to optimize a shooting performance. Dry firing provides an opportunity to train many of these elements. However, dry firing with a regular pistol (without any ammunition) is problematic where recoil management is not trained while dry firing. Therefore, live fire will always play a heavy role when training. Recoil management is only one element of shooting whereby the above mentioned skill-sets all can be trained while dry firing. Dry firing further can be conducted in many more locations whereas live fire is generally restricted to some form of a shooting range. However, a traditional weakness with dry firing is to have any confirmation of the actual hits when the trigger breaks. In other words, dry firing is a training technique ultimately leading to actual live fire in competition or in a self-defense application. Therefore, in order to attain the most gains and benefit from dry firing there must be some form of confirmation that the intended target is indeed in alignment with the axes of the muzzle when the trigger is broken.
With traditional live fire and dry firing training regimens, a shooter must practice various elements of pistolcraft and try to determine which causal factors are in the most need of improvement. While engaging in live fire, the impact of a bullet is an indicator of how well the shot was placed. Of course the impact of the bullet can indicate a missed shot, or a shot which is not at a perfect center location of the intended target. However, firearms create a certain degree of recoil and noise. One common occurrence among shooters is to develop a flinch. A flinch is a general natural response by the body which anticipates the recoil. Flinching involves undesirable anticipatory body movements such as pressing the gun downward prior to the shot firing causing a “six o'clock” or low shot. However, it can be difficult to determine the causal effects of a missed shot or any general shot not perfectly-placed or not of acceptable accuracy.
Dry firing removes the element of recoil and allows a shooter to train various skill sets of shooting. However, there is no projectile when dry firing to gauge the impact of a shot if one were to be fired. Other training tools are available, such as air soft guns and BB guns, which provide a low-cost alternative for sending a projectile out of a gun for indicating a hit or a miss or otherwise indicating the degree of accuracy of a shot. However, air soft guns expel the BBs, which must be picked up and still create a certain amount of noise which can be unacceptable in enclosures. For example, an air soft gun within a household can be very distracting and annoying to other members of the household, such as the shooter's family.
Therefore, there currently exists no training tool in the prior art which can identify feedback in a shooter's performance while dry firing that is economical, produces little noise and is further enjoyable and sustainable to the shooter that is training. Further, there is no effective training tool for gauging trigger mechanics and more specifically ascertaining whether a shooter has properly “taken-up” or otherwise partially depressed the trigger prior to the breaking point of the trigger. Take-up is an important element of shooting where a trigger is prepped and a certain amount of force is placed thereon prior to applying further force to break the trigger and accelerate the firing pin to the primer of a bullet thereby initiating the firing sequence. Because a lot of actual shooting occurs in a dynamic fashion, for example where a shooter is drawing the pistol and firing upon a target, it is difficult for a trainer or the shooter themselves to evaluate whether the trigger was properly prepped prior to firing and after the decision has been made by the shooter to place a bullet upon the target with the intention of destroying the target and further having the awareness of what is behind the target. Described herein is an embodiment to provide an indicator with a positional sensor switch to indicate whether a requisite amount of force and/or travel is placed upon the trigger prior to breaking the trigger. For example, when conducting a transition from one target to another where a shooter must rotate their upper body to a certain degree to acquire the new target, the shooter generally must apply some degree of pre-force upon the trigger prior to attaining site alignment and site picture upon the target. Often times, many shooters will not shoot off the reset of the gun, or otherwise completely disengage their finger from the trigger after a shot on a first target and not touch the trigger until the gun is completely on the second target and the gun has fully decelerated to a stop. Not only does it require time to apply force and reposition the trigger to prep it and then shoot it, oftentimes this practice results in sloppy trigger mechanics where the trigger is “slapped” or otherwise not pressed rearwardly substantially along the line of the center axis of the muzzle and hence the gun will rotate causing a missed shot or at the very least a less accurate shot. In particular with law-enforcement, a majority of shots from law enforcement officers are misses. Of course a missed shot in an urban or otherwise populated environment is a tremendous liability. Law-enforcement firearms instructors need a tool that can be used indoor and outdoor, is reliable, and provides the operating mechanisms for indicating proper take-up for a trigger, indicating the muzzle orientation when the trigger is broken and further provide other operational benefits such as allowing simulated reloads, draws and other shooting skill sets. Described in detail herein are various embodiments shown in one form which provide an economical, reliable and simple dry firing tool that can be in combination of the above mechanisms or have subsets of all these mechanisms for a usable embodiment.
Shooting mechanics must be trained and many problems with the shooter's ability can be attributed to certain specific mechanical issues with their shooting in conjunction with larger systemic issues described further below. With regard to the specific mechanical issues, grip, stance, eye focus, and trigger mechanics play a large role in a shooter's performance. In particular, grip and stance play a heavy role related to recoil management. However, of course, all of these elements work in conjunction to support a solid performance by the shooter. One observed problem with many shooters is a lack of isolation of the shooter's most dominant area which requires strengthening (which is merely a euphemism for the shooter's weaknesses). Oftentimes one strength can mask another weakness within the shooter. For example, oftentimes a very solid grip can mask trigger mechanic issues. Further, a shooter can have a very solid index and be very skilled in viewing a target and bring the sight picture with proper sight alignment on the target very quickly without a visual confirmation of the site alignment. A strong index can cause the shooter to gradually lose awareness of their sight and rely only on their strong indexing ability. Likewise, a strong grip can mask trigger mechanic problems which may not unfold until the shooter must shoot strong hand only (with a single hand, namely the shooter's dominant hand) or in particular, weak hand only.
Therefore, it can be appreciated that improving one's shooting ability requires a multi-faceted approach of analyzing all of the elements of shooting and the interaction of skill sets with one another, and further dissecting the areas which require strengthening and focusing on these areas. As mentioned above, live fire will test a shooters recoil management. As noted above, dry firing alone where the shooter only has his site picture to determine if the shot was good and no other external indicator, they cannot completely confirm that the shooter is trained properly and actually hit the target. The Applicant has personally witnessed with a proof of concept of this embodiment many skilled shooters may be absolutely marveled at misses upon targets while dry firing when utilizing and emitting a laser that is in alignment with the sites. In other words, many skilled shooters have utilized a tool made pursuant to the teachings of this disclosure and initially thought that the laser was not in alignment with the alignment of the front sight post with respect to centering of the post within the rear sight notch. However, after pressing the laser constantly and lining up the gun upon a target, indeed the laser was not misaligned but certain shooting mechanics of the skilled shooter were not “dialed in” and the laser provided an indication of misses by the shooter. As described further herein, proper training with the device disclosed herein does require a rigorous focus upon the front sight whereby in a preferred form the shooter will only have a general awareness of the laser upon the target in the background. However, empirical analysis has found that the general human factor engineering of the training pistol with the body, and in particular the optical senses of the body, can provide sufficient awareness of the shot placement by the indication of the laser impact while maintaining the full awareness of the sights of the training pistol. Therefore, the training device which in one form is a pistol (and one embodiment can be incorporated with a long gun such as a rifle or shotgun) can train most all elements of pistolcraft with the exception of recoil management. Because recoil management is a function of pure Newtonian physics, where force equals mass times acceleration, it is not possible to train recoil management outside of actual live fire. In other words, there is a tremendous amount of energy developed when a bullet accelerates to very high velocities. The basic momentum equations are of units of mass times velocity. A 124 grain bullet traveling at over 1000 ft. per second creates a certain degree of momentum where the equal and opposite momentum is exerted upon the firearm to the grip of the shooter to the overall body of the shooter down to the shooters feet. Further, the energy of the bullet is a function of the square of the velocity times the mass, but the energy of the bullet creates an equal and opposite force upon the firearm. Therefore, when firing a live round the shooter must learn to endure a certain amount of recoil energy and momentum resulting in an impulse force thereupon the grip of the shooter. Granted, a training device could be utilized to accelerate a mass, such as a heavier mass emulating a projectile having the same momentum, to emulate recoil where the heavier mass had a lower velocity was less of a liability when fired at locations outside of a shooting range. However, it is well-known in shooting disciplines that felt recoil is as much of an art with regard to the dynamics of the gun as it is a science. In other words, the action of the slide, the burn rate of the powder, the length of the barrel, the weight of the bullet and even the coating of the bullet that can alter the coefficient of friction, and they all play a role in felt recoil along with a plurality of other factors. It is also well-known in shooting semiautomatic pistols that the timing of the gun is unique amongst pistols, and even pistols of the exact same model and caliber, as well as ammunition. The timing of the gun relates to the muzzle flick and the natural resonant frequency of the muzzle being placed back into the proper desired site alignment. A desirable way of timing a gun is to place the front site back into its proper location in a critically damp manner. In engineering parlance a critically damp system places an object in an a desired location without any undesirable oscillations and further at an optimum speed in deceleration. Timing a critically damped system of a pistol in conjunction with the arms, upper body and lower body of a shooter, is a complex interaction between the idiosyncrasies of the pistol and the shooter. In conclusion, recoil management embodies numerous issues and the best way to train recoil management is live fire and actually shooting the shooter's own pistol with their own ammunition in simulated circumstances of competition or self-defense. However, a shooter can train the other elements of shooting to a large degree without live fire.
Disclosed herein is a system of training which projects an indicator, which in one preferred form is a visible laser beam on impact of a simulated trigger break. Further describes an environment that emits an indicator, such as a different colored laser, to indicate whether the trigger is taken up. Also disclosed is a modular system providing for a main slide module that is configured to have different grip modules attached thereto. The grip modules are designed to emulate the idiosyncrasies of different firearms, namely they are functional and not necessarily ornamental elements. The modular element aspect of the unit is such that additional trigger modules can be inserted therein whereby, for example, a trigger that rotates about a cross pin can be replaced with a trigger that provides transverse movement such as the trigger of a 1911 or the modern wide-body 2011 and all the various derivatives thereof. Further, an adjustment system is provided in one form to adjust the various attributes of a trigger where one goal of the adjustment system is to provide an emulated feel of an actual firearm. Further, in certain training scenarios the adjustment system of a trigger can be such that a heavy trigger requiring a lot of force for the take-up and breaking can be provided for training the strength of the trigger, as well as truly testing the trigger mechanics of the shooter. Further, a very light trigger can be utilized to train a shooter to position their finger in a fully taken-up position without applying unnecessary force which would result in an accidental or unintentional discharge of a real firearm. Of course, the embodiments are shown by way of example, and the claims are intended to be broadly read upon by all other variants embodying the spirit and scope of the claims. Further, the training of locations of such a tool described herein is vast and not yet fully explored at the time of this writing.
Also disclosed herein are various methods and tools providing an array of training techniques to enhance an individual's shooting skills. Of course in the broader scope, some of the techniques can become competitions in themselves and have broader implications and immediate use than just training. However, training is the cornerstone, and the Applicant's motto and mantra is “train hard and train smart”. “Train smart” consists of a detailed and thorough understanding of the various potential training responses resulting from a training protocol. “Training hard” requires either pushing the body to some form of fatigue or otherwise a new level of performance to result in adaptation which is more commonly referred to as making gains.
One underlying training principle is to emulate the environment of performance as much as possible, which includes the immediate environment of the footing, targets, temperature and other external circumstance. Another element of the environment is equipment. As noted above, it can be cost-prohibitive to exercise in live fire at all times, and it simply may not be feasible as very few people have immediate access to a range at any given time. Therefore, emulating equipment by way of focusing on the elements which interface directly with the user, such as the grip/handle of the gun, the trigger, and the sights are elements to emulate as much as possible, with further consideration of other aspects such as a magwell which allows insertion of the magazine therein, and a magazine release to emulate and practice dropping a magazine for a reload. Tony Blauer of Blauer Tactical Solutions has stated that in scenario-based training, the goal is to try to do the realist fake stuff if possible. In other words, it is never possible to fully emulate the actual performance environment of a competition or a self-defense situation and anyone engaging in training should understand this inherent limitation. However, emulating a live firearm as much as possible, even with the center of gravity of the firearm, and further utilizing weighted ingots to simulate the moment of inertia of the firearm about the various axes is very desirable. Other practical considerations are emulating an overall frame and slide so as to holster the training device to practice draws, and even further providing an emulated trigger guard to practice picking up the gun off of a surface, such as a table.
Other practical requirements consist of quick breakdown and setup of a training environment. Certain computer simulated training modules having a practice gun that emulates an invisible beam or otherwise receives a beam from, for example, a cathode-ray tube, are expensive, can only be utilized in that particular environment with the external equipment and provide other barriers to entry. In one particular law-enforcement agency known by the Applicant, such an expensive simulated training system cost tens of thousands of dollars (approximately $60,000) and requires extensive setup and calibration of approximately 30 minutes prior to use. Therefore, one consideration of training is to lower the barrier of entry by eliminating setup time where the training device described herein can be used with a plurality of different types of targets in numerous settings and environments.
A third element of training is to emulate the mental environment as much as possible with various forms of induced stimulus, which in some cases can cause stress with individuals. Performing with a pistol during competition has been known to cause interesting behavior patterns among shooters, causing them to make mental errors which are generally uncharacteristic for the shooter.
One element of the method of training results in physiological adaptation of the body, even to the point of having a asymmetric dilation of the eyes with a dominant eye focused on the front sight, and the weak eye focused at a line of sight adjacent to the front sight line of sight where the weak eye is focusing on the target. An advanced skill is to have one eye focused upon the target and the other eye maintaining a crisp focus on the front sight. Certain corrective lenses have accomplished this element, but it is believed that a rigorous training protocol can actually allow the shooter to maintain a split eye viewpoint and even focus in a chameleon-like manner. Another phenomenon observed by the Applicant is having the pupils vary in dilation to a noticeable degree, where the strong eye has a slightly narrower iris opening and the weak eye (i.e., the non-dominant eye) having a slightly more open iris. This phenomenon is not completely understood, but at the very least has been observed.
The body can also be surgically altered whereby the Applicant has had his trailing foot be altered where the Achilles tendon was completely severed and reattached giving a slightly longer tendon for further range of motion of the foot. The increased range of motion allows for the entire foot to remain on a ground surface with the knee bent forward an additional degree to allow the center of gravity of the Applicant to become lower.